Blood Hollow (Cork O'Connor)

by William Kent Krueger

  Deputy Pender was new to the sheriff’s department. He hadn’t served under Cork. To him, Corcoran O’Connor was just a guy who ran a burger joint on Iron Lake. Because Pender was a Baptist, the priest had no special authority as far as he was concerned. He jerked his head in the direction of the trail up to the parking lot. “You heard the sheriff.”

  “Are you going to bag that stuff?” Cork asked, indicating the things Gooding had uncovered near the body.

  “O’Connor.” Soderberg put out a hand, as if to move Cork bodily from the scene. Cork glared at the hand, and Soderberg drew up short of actually touching him.

  “I’ll bag it,” Gooding said.

  Cork turned and started up the bank. The priest held back.

  Mal Thorne asked, “Sheriff, when are you going to tell her parents?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “I’d like to be there when you do.”

  Soderberg shook his head. “I don’t think—”

  “Arne,” Cork said, “have you ever had to tell a mother or father that their child is dead?”

  In reply, the sheriff simply glared. It may have been meant to demonstrate Soderberg’s perturbation, but more probably it was meant to disguise the fact that he’d never had to shoulder that particular burden.

  Cork said, “When you do, I think you’ll be glad to have someone like Mal there with you.”

  “When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it.” To his credit, Soderberg spoke civilly to the priest. “I’ll think about it, and I’ll let you know.”

  “I’ll be at the rectory.”

  Soderberg turned an angry eye on Pender. “When you get to the parking lot, relieve Borkmann and send him down here. I want a word with him.”

  They walked up the trail, slowly because of the slippery terrain and because there was something heavy on them now. Cork thought about Soderberg, about the anguish on his face as he’d stared down at the body of Charlotte Kane. It occurred to him that the sheriff had probably never dealt with death in this way before. He wondered how Soderberg liked the responsibility of the job now.

  The priest let out a deep sigh that had nothing to do with the effort of the climb. “Is Rose home?”

  “I think so,” Cork said. “Why?”

  The priest kept his eyes on the mud. “Glory’s going to need her.”

  6

  CORK SPENT THE AFTERNOON working on Sam’s Place, getting ready for the tourist season. Sam’s Place was an old Quonset hut that had long ago been converted to a burger stand on the shore of Iron Lake, just beyond the northern limits of Aurora. Beginning in early May until late October, Cork, with the help of his daughters, catered to the hungry fishermen and tourists and locals. For an ex-lawman, it was a quiet existence, but one Cork had come to appreciate.

  He was thinking about Charlotte Kane as he worked, about how peaceful she’d looked in death. He’d heard that freezing wasn’t a bad way to go, that people who froze to death experienced a false warmth at the end, a final euphoria. Maybe that’s how it had been for Charlotte. He hoped so. However, that didn’t explain why she had no gloves with her, or who’d opened the curiously unbroken Corona bottle. Cork had considered from several angles the food wrappers found in the snow near the body. He would love to have a look at the autopsy, to know if any of that junk food was in her stomach when she died. Because more and more, the circumstances caused him to consider the possibility that she had not been alone at the end.

  He’d already pulled away the plywood that had covered the serving windows all winter, and was just preparing to clean a squirrel’s nest from the lakeside eave, when his cell phone chirped.

  “Cork O’Connor,” he answered.

  There was nothing but static on the phone, which didn’t surprise him at all. Technologically speaking, Aurora was at the edge of a frontier. The demand for cell phones wasn’t great enough yet to warrant the building of relay towers that would easily service the area. North of Aurora, cell phones didn’t work at all. In town, reception was often sketchy at best. Usually, Cork didn’t even bother to carry his cell phone with him.

  “Hello,” he said. “You’re not coming in well.”

  Within the scratchy static, he made out Rose’s voice and two phrases. “Glory Kane …” and “… needs your help.”

  Glory Kane opened the door before he knocked. Cork was surprised to see that she seemed perfectly sober.

  Glory was in her midthirties, a good thirteen years younger than her brother. Aside from the surname they shared, there was little about the two Kanes that was alike. Fletcher was tall, awkward looking, already gone bald. Glory was a small woman, with long black hair, and lovely features. When she did the full nine yards of makeup, she was absolutely stunning. For a while after she’d arrived in Aurora with Fletcher, she’d often taken the time to look that way. Little by little, however, she had abandoned the enormous effort it must have taken to paint over and powder smooth her pain, and now her face was different. It bore the beaten expression of a war veteran, the sometimes vacant stare of someone who’d survived a long and bitter campaign. Very often, this was simply the effect of the booze, for it was no secret that Glory Kane drank. She wasn’t obnoxious in her drunkenness. Usually, she holed up in her brother’s big house, and no one saw her for days. In the Kane household, she seemed to cover much the same territory that Rose did with the O’Connors, and to care about Charlotte as deeply as Rose did her own nieces and nephew. This might have been the reason she had allowed Rose closer than anyone else in Aurora. That and the fact that Rose didn’t have a judgmental bone in her body.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said, and stood back to let him enter.

  Like Cork and a lot of others who now lived in Aurora, the Kanes had returned after a long absence. Fletcher and Glory had been gone longer than most, thirty-five years. Fletcher, when he left, had been Cork’s age, thirteen. Glory had been conceived, but not yet born, visible only as an obvious rounding of her mother’s belly. So far as Cork knew, no one had heard a word from them after they’d gone. Any relatives they’d had in Tamarack County had died or departed long ago. They had no old friends and no apparent reason that compelled their return. The middle-aged Fletcher, now a widower, had simply showed up unannounced one day a couple of years earlier, bringing with him his daughter, his sister, and enough money to be one of the richest men on the Iron Range. He’d settled into life in Aurora without any word about what had happened to him in the nearly four decades of his absence. The facts known about him were few. He was a physician, a plastic surgeon, but he no longer practiced. He speculated in real estate and land development instead. He supported the Independent Republican party with heavy donations. And he guarded his privacy fiercely, something guaranteed to raise an eyebrow in any small town.

  In addition to building Valhalla, his isolated retreat, he’d bought one of the grandest houses in Aurora, the old Parrant estate, which occupied the entire tip of the finger of land called North Point. The house was huge, gray stone, surrounded by cedars and an enormous expanse of lawn that ran down to the shore of Iron Lake. Cork knew the Parrant estate well. One snowy night a few years before, he’d been the one who found Judge Parrant in his study with most of his head blown away.

  Glory led him into the living room. Rose was already seated on the couch. She made room for Cork beside her.

  “You know about Charlotte,” he said.

  Glory nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” Cork said.

  “Thank you.” It was obvious she’d been crying, but she seemed to have composed herself. Cork figured Rose had been a big help.

  Glory generally kept to herself. Except for her regular attendance at St. Anges, she was seldom seen in public. This spawned all kinds of gossip. Rose listened to none of it, and from the beginning had made an effort to befriend her. Once or twice a week, she came visiting, and the two women talked over coffee. After Charlotte disappeared, Glory stopped going to church and Rose became very nearly her only
contact with the world outside the stone walls of her brother’s home. Glory was an intelligent woman and talked about books, religion, politics, but not, Rose said, about her life before she came to Aurora.

  “You used to be sheriff,” Glory said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Rose thinks you might know something about finding people.”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “When Sheriff Soderberg told us there was going to be an autopsy on Charlotte, Fletcher was furious. He’s a doctor. He knows what they do to a body during an autopsy. He argued. If Father Mal hadn’t been here to intervene, I think he might have become violent. He went into his office, locked the door, stayed there until the sheriff and Father Mal had gone. He wouldn’t open it when I knocked. A little while later, he stormed out of the house. I haven’t heard from him since. That was several hours ago.”

  “You’re worried about his safety?”

  “In his state of mind, I’m afraid he could do something drastic.”

  “And you want me to find him before he does?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why not the sheriff’s people?”

  “I know he wouldn’t talk to them, and they might only upset him more.”

  In the days of Judge Parrant, the house had been a dark place, full of hunting trophies and a suffocating silence. The trophies were gone but Cork still felt the silence there, thick in all the rooms he could not see.

  “He might not want me looking for him,” Cork said.

  “But I do.”

  “I mean, he might not want me looking for him.”

  Glory’s hands worked over each other, as if she were washing them, desperate to be clean. “I know he doesn’t like you. I don’t know why, but that doesn’t matter now. I just want to be certain he’s okay.”

  Cork said, “All right.”

  Glory took a white Bible from the coffee table and held it in her hands. “Rose and I have been talking. There are those who believe it takes three days for the spirit to adjust to the reality of death, three days to let go completely of the body. For Charlotte, three days was a long time ago. I understand that’s not Charlotte they’re working on in the morgue, but Fletcher doesn’t see it that way.”

  Cork said, “Any idea where he might have gone?”

  In the face of this simple question, Glory seemed completely lost.

  “We’ve been over that, Cork,” Rose said. “Glory has no idea.”

  “Does he have an office somewhere?” Cork prompted.

  “Only here,” Glory said.

  “How about a bar he likes?”

  “Fletcher doesn’t drink.”

  “Friends?”

  “Fletcher has associates. He has acquaintances. But he has no friends.”

  “Is there someplace that’s special to him? Valhalla maybe?”

  “He hates Valhalla. After Charlotte disappeared, he couldn’t stand going back there.”

  “Could he be out driving somewhere, thinking?”

  “He gets car sick.”

  “May I use your phone?” Cork said.

  “There.” Glory indicated a cordless on a table near the kitchen doorway.

  Cork took the phone and stepped into the kitchen where he could speak in private. On the wall next to the refrigerator hung a large frame with several photographs, each with its own opening in the matte. They were all of Kane and his daughter in a happier time, smiling. On snowmobiles, on mountain bikes, on a tennis court, on a beach, and one in formal attire beside a wall hung with red bougainvillea. They appeared to have done a lot of things together, and seemed to have genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. Physically, they were an unusual pairing—Charlotte, dark-haired and lovely, with a smile that showed braces; her father bald, long-limbed, and homely. Cork thought the girl had been lucky to have inherited what must have been her mother’s beauty, because her father was so extraordinarily odd-looking. The photos appeared to have been taken before the Kanes moved to Minnesota, because there were mountains behind the snowmobiles, and the beach was on the ocean. Cork wondered why he’d never seen Kane and his daughter doing things together in Aurora. Had something happened to come between them, to ruin the joy they’d shared? The death of Kane’s wife, perhaps? Cork didn’t know the details, but maybe it had been a particularly difficult ordeal and the memory was painful. Perhaps that was why there were no pictures of Charlotte’s mother.

  He dialed the sheriff’s office and spoke with Deputy Marsha Dross, who was on desk duty. Fletcher Kane hadn’t been there. Cork called the morgue at Aurora Community Hospital where the autopsy would be performed, but he got no answer. He called and spoke with Arne Soderberg at home, who said that since he’d left the Kanes’ house several hours earlier, he hadn’t seen or heard from the man. Cork went back to the living room.

  “Glory, is there a working telephone at Valhalla?”

  “I think so. We never had the service canceled. But you’re wasting your time, Cork.”

  “It’s one more place we can eliminate.”

  Glory gave him the number.

  Cork let the phone ring ten times. He was just about to hang up when the receiver at the other end was lifted. No one spoke.

  “Fletcher?” Cork said.

  He heard only the sound of breathing, heavy but not labored.

  “Fletcher, it’s Cork O’Connor.”

  There was a long moment of silence, followed by a single word uttered like a curse.

  “Butchers.”

  Glory didn’t accompany Cork. Fletcher, she said, wouldn’t listen to her. Cork suspected Fletcher wouldn’t listen to him either, but he agreed to try.

  He wasn’t surprised that Glory didn’t know the roots of her brother’s enmity toward the O’Connor name. It had occurred in a time when Glory was still contentedly inside her mother’s womb.

  Cork remembered Harold Kane as a spidery man, long-limbed, with bulging eyes, and soft hands that smelled of antiseptic. On a Saturday morning when Cork and Fletcher were both thirteen years old, Harold Kane had locked himself in his dental office on Oak Street, sat in the chair where his patients usually reclined, and put a bullet in his head.

  In a small town like Aurora, suicide was the kind of event that lingered a long time in the collective memory. When it came to light that Sheriff Liam O’Connor had been investigating Dr. Kane because one of his patients had alleged that the dentist molested her while she was anesthetized in his office, there was a good deal more to remember than the desperate act itself. Because the man died before all the evidence could be considered and formal charges brought, his guilt or innocence was never established. That didn’t matter. In the mind of the town, his response was proof enough. He was, in public opinion, tried and convicted.

  A few weeks later, Fletcher Kane’s pregnant mother left town, taking her son away from the vicious tongues.

  Cork all but forgot the Kanes, but Fletcher had not forgotten the O’Connors. An incident occurred soon after the Kanes’ return that signaled to Cork the deep resentment the man must have felt all those years as a result of his father’s death.

  Access to Sam’s Place was via a narrow, gravel road that branched off a street on the outskirts of Aurora. Before it crossed the Burlington Northern tracks, the road passed through land privately owned by Shorty Geiger. Sam Winter Moon, the old Ojibwe after whom the establishment was named, had obtained easement rights through Geiger’s land and across the Burlington Northern tracks. On Sam’s death, when the Quonset hut and surrounding property passed to Cork O’Connor, there was a clause that required renegotiation of the easement agreement. In Aurora, not much happened in a hurry, and no one rushed to litigation. But shortly after Fletcher Kane returned, Cork received notice that access to Sam’s Place could no longer occur as it had in the past. A development company had purchased Shorty’s land and intended to put a fast-food franchise there, a move that would pretty much insure the end of Sam’s Place. Jo mounted a marvelous legal battle and won back the
easement rights. The franchise was never built. In the litigation process, Jo discovered that the major investor in the development company was none other than Fletcher Kane.

  Cork pulled into the muddy drive of Valhalla, deep in the woods north of Aurora. It was hard dark by then, and his headlights flashed on the back end of Fletcher Kane’s silver Cadillac El Dorado. He parked, killed his lights, and got out.

  The night was still, but the lake was thawing. Beyond the pine trees, it moaned and cracked and made Cork think of a great animal awakening.

  A bright three-quarter moon lit the scene. There were no lights on in the big cabin, nor in the guesthouse. Cork took a flashlight from the glove compartment of his Bronco, but he didn’t turn it on. He approached the big cabin, carefully mounting the wooden steps built into the hillside. With its grand deck that overlooked the water, the cabin seemed like a ghost ship anchored among the black trunks of the pines. He crossed the deck to the screen door and saw that the heavy inside door was open. The room beyond it was completely dark.

  As he stood at the threshold, Cork became aware of a strong odor all around him that was out of place among the fresh scent of spring pines.

  Kerosene.

  “Fletcher,” he called toward the black inside.

  He heard movement, then a metallic squeak. In the dark of the room, a small circle of glowing red rotated into sight. Cork interpreted the squeak to come from the mechanism of a swivel rocker. He was pretty sure the red glow came from the end of a lit cigar.

  “Fletcher?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Glory asked me to come. She’s worried.”

  “Tell her I’m touched. Now go away.”

  “I’m not leaving until we talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you, O’Connor.”

  Kane’s speech was slurred, and despite what Glory said about her brother not drinking, it was clear to Cork that’s exactly what Fletcher had been doing. The whole situation struck Cork as odd. Glory, who drank, was sober. Fletcher, who didn’t, was drunk.